matter of environment or genetic evolution; it was a matter of _genealogy_! It wasn't science, it was _history_! That was where the answer would be!

And again, it came back to _why_. Why did humans have talent?

Because somewhere in history, it became part of their genetic line. And that piece of history was the answer to the puzzle.

That was an answer that no amount of Faey science was going to discover. That was why the Faey could not answer the question. They could discover the how, and the what, but without access to the history of Earth, it was a mystery that would forever be unsolved.

They had to find Tim and Temika's common ancestor. That was the answer. If they could find that common ancestor between Tim and Temika, then Miaari's enigmatic question would be answered, and she had told him that he had to answer that question if he had any hope of succeeding in his difficult task.

He was sure of it.

So... now that he knew where to look, it came down to figuring out how to find out. Since it wasn't going to be a matter of science, but of history, then the first place to start would be to try to find out where and when Tim and Temika's different family trees converged. They'd need to try to trace their genealogy and try to find that common ancestor, and that common ancestor was the first signpost on the road that would lead to the answer to _why_.

_Jason? Jason?_ Jyslin sent in concern, prodding him with her fingers.

_What? Oh, sorry,_ he answered. _I was thinking about something._

_You know, with these genetic codes mapped, we could easily test everyone here to see if they have this genetic footprint,_ Rann mused mentally. _It would take all of ten seconds._

_I'm not sure everyone would like you sticking them with needles._

_Oh, I wouldn't need a needle. I could rig up a device that would scan the DNA of the skin. Just touch it to them, and it would only take about ten seconds for it to return a response._

What a brilliant idea! _Rann, you just became my new best friend,_ Jason sent to him earnestly. _Build it. Build it so it's small, portable, and easy to hide._

_Why does itohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,_ he sent, his thoughts enlightened. _You want to use it to find other human telepaths out in the world!_

_We're going to need more,_ Jason affirmed. _If we can find other people with the potential before the Faey do, we can get to them first. I'm sure that after they see their options, at least some of them would side with us rather than become lapdogs and spies for the Imperium's secret police. How fast can you build something like that?_

_It would take a few days,_ he answered. _I could cannibalize some of the equipment we have here to build it. I could build it to look for some critical sequence pairs, since there's some genetic variations between you and Tim and Temika for example, that means that there's going to be some genetic variation from telepath to telepath. There's some common patterns in all three of you, so I could build the device to look for those. They don't show up in non-telepaths, and should be broad enough to catch a large range of humans with the footprint._

_Do it,_ Jason ordered. _Outside of caring for Kumi, it's your primary responsibility._

_I'll get right on it,_ he answered. _I knew taking all those technical repair and plasmonic systems courses would come in handy,_ he sent, giving Songa an amused look.

_Oh, stuff it,_ she retorted archly.

                                        * * *

Just because he knew where to look, it didn't help all that much, because he honestly had no idea where to start.

He sat in his room, feet propped up on the desk, panel in his lap as he searched through a bunch of old records that had once been in the American system, but had been absorbed into CivNet after the subjugation. Just because he knew that Tim and Temika had a common ancestor, that didn't in any way make it easy to find that ancestor. For one, all the records on Tim McGee were _gone_. After he and Symone escaped, and they thought them dead, Imperial Intelligence had gone through Earth's entire datanet and stripped every single record of Tim out of _everything_. It was as if he had never existed. There wasn't even any record of him attending school in New Orleans. He didn't even have a birth certificate. They had been amazingly thorough.

Temika had almost no paper trail. He found her birth records and used the names on her birth certificate to search back through about a century of her family, but then her family dropped off the face of the world. The last record he could find was for Joseph Daniels, who was born in 1901 to Sam and Delilah Daniels, in Bayou La Batrie, Alabama. But there was no record of either Sam or Delilah before that. He did remember her talking about her grandmother, who had to be Delilah, and he did recall her saying something about her grandmother being the daughter of one of the slaves freed after the Civil War. So, odds were, there was almost no paper trail on her grandmother's side. And since Sam Daniels was also most likely the child or grandchild of a formal slave, there was little hope to find anything useful on that side either. Any record of them or their parents had most likely been destroyed in the Civil War.

So, after that revelation, he found himself almost immediately stuck. He finally had an idea of where to look to answer that question... _why_.

Or at least he was stuck concerning Tim and Temika.

He knew quite a bit of his own family tree. His father was born to first generation Americans, and his great-grandparents on both his grandmother and grandfather's sides had come from Great Britain. His grandfather's parents were English, and his grandmother's parents had been from Scotland. His mother's family had emigrated from Quebec before she was born, and before that, her side of the family had immigrated to Canada from France _way_ back in the early 1700's. Her ancestors had fought in the French and Indian Wars. Her genealogy was almost exclusively of French descent except for one American Indian great-great grandmother.

Before that, it got a little fuzzy. The only thing he really knew for sure was that his grandmother's ancestors had been minor nobility in the lowlands of Scotland, and that one of his grandfather's ancestors had been a servant in Queen Elizabeth I's court. Outside of one ancestor, the entirety of his family tree came from England, Scotland, and France... as far as he knew.

So, if the docs were right and there was some kind of commonality in the family trees of telepaths, then they'd have to be of English, Scottish, or French ancestry. Well, at least for his own family. If they were right and Jason wasn't related to Tim and Temika at all, then that meant that telepathic ability had sprung up in two places or more, and that Tim and Temika's "alpha ancestor" could have been from anywhere. It could be some white ancestor in Temika's line, or some black ancestor in Tim's, either or. One thing was for sure, given the fact that they were two different races, one of them had to have an ancestor outside his or her race of appearance.

All things considered, he'd bet it was Temika. Her facial structure wasn't quite what one would consider entirely African in appearance. The first time he'd seen her, he'd taken notice of the shape of her eyes, nose, mouth, and cheeks, and had even then thought that she had to be of mixed ancestry. That certainly wasn't to say that Tim didn't have a black ancestor somewhere in his family tree, but going just on appearances, if he was going to lay odds on which of the two had a race-crossing ancestor, he'd put his money on Temika's family.

This might be a job for Miaari. It was going to take quite a bit of digging to find hard to get information like this, and that was a job for a professional seeker of information. It was something to which he couldn't devote an inordinate amount of time, because he had other, equally important, things to do.

One of those other things was sitting on his panel's email queue, waiting for his attention. He switched over to mail, and saw that his dropship was ready for delivery. It had cost him a serious chunk of credit, but it was absolutely necessary. It was brand new, right off the assembly line, a shiny new ARL-3 Space Ground Transport. It had cost him C577,583 after taxes and after he had it equipped with shields and mid-grade MPAC cannons, a considerable amount of money. But it was a self-contained cargo dropship, the largest dropship he could get that would fit through the doors of the Lincoln warehouse, a ship that would be carrying a C117,300 high-capacity industrial replicator inside it. That too was part of the invoice, for he'd bought the replicator and requested to have it loaded on the dropship once it was complete and ready for shipment.

Interesting. They wanted face to face confirmation of the shipping arrangements. Well, that wasn't all that difficult. _Jyslin,_ he sent strongly, so he would be heard basically anywhere in town. _Come home for a minute, I need your help._

_I'm in the kitchen, I'll be right up,_ came her open reply.

Jason found the number to call in the email, and queued it up in his panel's comm program as he wrote down some information on a piece of paper. Jyslin opened the door carrying a sandwich of some kind, complete with bread. _Bread?_

_Yohne made it from _scratch_,_ she sent. _She may be a doctor, but she's also one hell of a cook. She's teaching Temika how to do it right now._

_Well, that's probably the one and only thing that could make Temika interact with a Faey,_ Jason grunted. _Mika loves to cook, and being able to make homemade bread from scratch is something she'd probably love to know._

_What did you need?_

_You get to be my secretary,_ he told her.

She gave him a quirky smile. _Oh, a secretary? Is this going to end up with me being hiked over the desk?_ she asked, her sending complete with this image of her as the secretary succumbing to the ardor of the boss.

_Put your game face on, woman,_ he sent. _This is serious. Thrynn wants face to face confirmation of the shipping arrangements for the dropship. I need a Faey for that._

_Not a problem, love,_ she sent reassuringly, pulling her long red hair back from her face and starting to twist it into a pony tail. _No secretary would go around with her hair unbound. Find me a rubber band or pin or something, will you?_

Once Jason helped her tie her hair back into a pony tail, she sat down in front of the panel and looked over the information he had written for her on the pad. He stood behind the panel, out of view of the video, and Jyslin placed the call. After navigating through an automated menu, she looked at him meaningfully when the audio picked up. _"Shipping, this is Yeris. How may I help you?"_ a male Faey voice called over the audio.

"Yes, I'm calling to schedule an appointment to have a dropship shipped," she answered.

_"I can help you with that, madam, can you give me your customer ID number please?"_ Jyslin read off the number Jason had written down. _"VulTech Technologies Corporation, madam?"_

"That's us," she said with a disarming smile.

_"Alright, madam, your dropship is ready for shipment right now. It's been loaded with a piece of cargo delivered from Kodiken Shipping, as per your instructions. I've been given your delivery confirmation code for that, let me send it to you."_

"Good, I was just about to ask if that was there," Jyslin said with a nod.

_"Yes, madam, it's arrived and has already been loaded and secured. Now, would you like to send a team to pick up the unit, or would you prefer to have it delivered? Please keep in mind that if you come to pick up the unit, the cost of shipping that was already added to the price of the unit will be refunded to you."_

"We'd like to have it delivered, please."

_"Alright. Before we arrange a shipping date, please allow me to explain our shipping procedures."_

"Go right ahead."

_"Thank you. Your dropship will be delivered to any destination which is convenient, but falls within certain safety guidelines. The destination must have sufficient space to safely land the dropship and a skimmer, and must be at a spaceport or company facility capable of handling the unit. It will be flown to its destination by a Thrynne pilot and a staff of three maintenance personnel, fully licensed and insured,"_ he said quickly, _"who will be responsible for signing off on the delivery acceptance inspection. A skimmer will escort the dropship to its destination, both to inspect the unit in flight and also to return the pilot and inspectors home after delivery is complete. The cost of shipping has already been added to the price of the unit, so you will incur no additional charges."_

Jyslin looked to Jason, who nodded. "That sounds completely reasonable," she told him pleasantly.

_"Once the delivery inspection is complete and both parties are satisfied that the unit was delivered in working order and without damage, the final contract will be signed that will transfer ownership over to your corporation. You must have an executive on site with the authority to sign this contract or we cannot leave the unit with you."_

Jason frowned. That wasn't going to make it easy, because he didn't want anyone to know that a human owned VulTech, but he could figure something out. He nodded to Jyslin a bit reluctantly. _That's gonna be tricky, but we have no choice. We'll figure something out._

"That won't be a problem," she told him.

_"Very good then, madam. What location would you like to take delivery?"_

"The VulTech headquarters, 1 Quickmart Drive, Lincoln, Jurea Province, American Sector, Terra. The global location code for this facility is NA23-4658-7836."

_"One moment. Alright, I have the location now. Confirming, global location code NA23-4658-7836."_

"That's right. Yes, that's the location." _Did you know that someone already took a picture of the warehouse? Global positioning has a picture of it with the VulTech logo on it._

_Well, I had to supply a picture of the building in with the tax paperwork when I bought it for VulTech, and I took the picture after I painted it. They probably used the same picture._

_Probably._

_"Delivery to this location can be done in six hours at the earliest. Any receiving appointment past that works for us, madam."_

_Tomorrow?_

_Yeah, I already did the math, just use what I have written down._

"We'd like to take delivery at 06:30 Imperial Standard Time tomorrow," she told the clerk, looking at the panel monitor.

_"06:30 Imperial Standard Time, 29 Romaa. Correct?"_

"That's right."

_"Alright, madam, the delivery time, date, and location have been confirmed. We'll see you tomorrow morning at 06:30 at the delivery site."_

"We'll be here," she told him with a smile.

_"Very good. Now that delivery is confirmed, let me take a moment to describe our warranty and maintenance policies."_ Jason listened as the male Faey on the other end of that call went over those policies, which sounded quite advantageous to the customer. The dropship had an unconditional three year warranty; if _anything_ broke, for _any_ reason outside of combat or sabotage, Thrynne would repair it for free. They also would sell parts directly to VulTech basically at cost for seven years after the warranty expired, would send a maintenance team to the unit and perform maintenance on site at rates that were highly competitive with other maintenance shops, and offered in-house insurance for the unit that was very cheap. Thrynne took quality _very_ seriously, and they were so certain about the quality and durability of their dropship, they were literally willing to put their money where their mouths were. Jason knew that none of that would apply to him, since he was going to basically void the warranty by putting the ship through extensive customization... but the ability to buy cheap replacement parts directly from the company would be useful.

Now Jason saw why a Thrynne dropship was more expensive than other companies; you weren't buying a dropship, you were buying a commitment from the corporation that built that dropship.

_"Is there anything else that I can help you with, madam?"_ the clerk asked after completing his recitation of Thrynne policies.

"No, I think that about covers it. Thank you very much."

_"You're welcome, madam. And thank you for choosing Thrynne for your dropship needs."_

Jyslin ended the call, and she looked at him. _You know, those people at Thrynne really know how to train their customer service._

_They make a quality product, and aren't afraid to put their money behind it._ Jason centered himself, sitting down on the bed and putting his fingers to his temples, and then performed a trick that Jyslin had taught him since she had arrived, one of the first things she thought he'd need to be able to do.

Send to non-telepathic humans.

There was a certain way you pushed it out. A subtle alteration of the _timbre_ of the sending, kind of like speaking at a certain pitch. That was the trick of it. A non-telepathic mind could receive sending if the telepath was careful to do it this way. This was the first time he'd attempted to use it this way, but he'd had enough practice doing this by practicing with Luke, who was willing to be his partner. As Jason taught Luke about flying, Luke had allowed him to practice sending to him. It certainly took a _lot_ more effort and energy, kind of like stirring molasses with a wooden spoon. You had to really push, but you also had to be very careful or you'd spill it, slosh it out of the bowl. That was what this was like. He had to put a lot of effort behind it, but it had to be _gentle_ or it'd cause pain to the non-telepaths that received it.

_Now hear this,_ Jason sent, giving his sending enough power to reach the edges of the city, but not sending with such force that those in the same building with him were overwhelmed by the power of it. _This is Jason. Jyslin has taught me how to send messages like this one so everyone in the community can hear them. So everyone calm down and relax. You're not going crazy, you're not hearing voices, you're hearing me broadcasting a telepathic message that everyone can hear and understand. And I can't hear you, this is a one-way communication, so don't try to answer._

_I need everyone who helped do the refit on my skimmer to report to the governor's mansion conference room immediately. I also need Symone, Temika, Doc Rann, and Doc Songa to report to the conference room as well. The dropship refit project is now on the table, ladies and gentlemen, we just arranged delivery of it a few minutes ago. So, we need to meet and go over what's going to happen in the next few days._

Jyslin gave him a startled look, then laughed. _You should have warned them about that._

_If they want to be resistance fighters, they'd better get used to the idea of handing surprises,_ Jason sent seriously. _I didn't warn them on purpose. I want to see how they react._

_This should be interesting._

The reaction was one of shock. No one in the community had expected something like that, and it was evident almost immediately, when a multitude of people radioed in asking what the hell was going on, that most of them thought it was some kind of trick perpetrated by the newcomers. It _did_, however, get everyone's attention, and cause everyone he wanted to come to the conference room.

Once he got them all there, he assured them it _was_ him, and then changed the subject to the dropship. He used his panel to project a hologram of the dropship in schematic form. "Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, our next project. We can't start working on getting Cheyenne Mountain ready to move in until we refit the dropship, because it's going to be carrying everything. Now, this ship is about thirty times bigger than my skimmer, so it's going to take quite a while to get it ready. Tomorrow, just after noon, the dropship is going to be delivered to the warehouse in Lincoln, and we're _all_ going to be there to receive it. I don't want the people from Thrynne thinking that VulTech is anything other than a legitimate business, so they're going to see lots of human and Faey workers at the warehouse. Now, since there are about forty of us and only one skimmer that can only carry ten at a time, that means it's going to take a few trips to get everyone there. So I want everyone to draw numbers out of a hat so we can figure out who goes when. And before anyone whines about not getting much sleep tonight, keep in mind I have to fly every leg of it," he told them.

"This means that it's going to be your first real test," he told them. "You're going to be exposed to unknown Faey that might try to listen in on your surface thoughts. This is when you're going to prove that you can control your stray thoughts. If those Faey come and go and never think the wiser, then you're ready."

_You sure they're ready for that?_ Jyslin sent.

Jason glanced at her. _Ready or not, it's necessary,_ he answered. _If those Thrynne people come and find an empty warehouse with no workers there, it might raise a red flag. They have to see what they expect to see._

_Point._

"Symone has taught you how to keep a handle on your surface thoughts," Jason told them. "It's not going to be much different from the exercises, only this time you have a reason not to mess up. Rann, Songa, Symone, you're going to be there too, as employees," he told the two. "They need to see more Faey than just Jyslin. The people from Thrynne need to see nothing more than what they expect to see, a new Terran business that just bought its first dropship, with Faey executives and human employees. All of us will be the actors on the stage.

"Yes, it's going to be dangerous, and it's unexpected, but that's what it's all about. We'll never get off the ground if we can't deal with stress and be able to roll with unexpected surprises. This is a test of all of us, to see how well we can handle an unknown situation. I could have told you all about this, but then you'd have time to think about it and be ready. What will happen tomorrow won't be much different than what we might be doing later. So, tomorrow we find out how ready we are to deal with the unexpected. And tomorrow, we get the first big piece of what we're going to need to do what we're going to do."

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Jayce?" someone called.

"Not really, but we have to find out if we can do it, and it's not something we can really prepare for. Symone taught all of you, you know what you need to know, so let's find out tomorrow if it's going to work. We need to find out _now_, when it won't matter as much, than later, when it can get us all killed."

"Well, that makes some sense," someone called.

"By the way, this does _not_ mean we're not having evening training," Jyslin called sternly. "Everyone on the evening rotation had better show up."

Since two days after she arrived, Jyslin had been training everyone in basic military skills. She had two training sessions, and had split the community in half; half of them had training in the morning, the other half had training in the evening. She'd wanted to train for more than four hours a day, but everyone had other duties, so she had to make due with the time she had. Jason himself did not get out of this training, he was part of the morning session. They didn't yet have enough railguns to go around, but Jason had had a shipment of 30 Mark VI Panther MPAC rifles shipped to the warehouse. Everyone in the training session had a weapon with which to train. Jason didn't like shelling out the C72,500 for them, but he'd already planned on buying at least some MPAC rifles. They would use them both as weapons and also as misdirection, to complete the illusion that armored figures were Faey soldiers and not guerillas.

Jyslin was quite a drill sergeant. She didn't take any lip off anyone, she was harsh, she was demanding, and she was quick to criticize. But she was also quick to complement, and though everyone hated her when she was on that field, nobody said she was unfair. In just eight days, just about everyone had been trained in the use of an MPAC, and they had started learning basic small unit tactics, things like covering partners, moving without getting killed, looking over the terrain to find the safest and fastest way to move from one place to another, things that a seasoned combat veteran like Jyslin knew.

Yesterday, they'd had their first unit against unit training session. Like any MPAC, these Panther models had a setting that basically fired a magnetic envelope holding pressurized air, air that was drawn in through the venting system. When the magnetic envelope ruptured, the air decompressed rapidly, delivering some impressive force. It was something akin to a "stun" setting because the round struck with some force, but it was non-lethal. It carried enough kinetic energy to really sting when it impacted, like being hit with a paintball, and could probably give someone a mild concussion if it hit them in the head. Yesterday at lunch, between the two training sessions, they'd held a "capture the flag" game between the morning and afternoon teams. It was a practical exercise using what Jyslin had taught them so far, and it had been very... _exciting_. Jason had literally had fun, even though they were training for real combat, training for the day when they'd be killing people. But at that moment, there was something very exciting and fun about trying to maneuver around the ten defending guards protecting the morning crew's flag and capturing it.

God, was that a shock. After eliminating seven of them, losing five of his own team, and getting to the stand, he found _Meya_ standing beside it, holding an MPAC. He was so surprised that she shot him and eliminated him from the game.

After that round was over, he found out that Myra had been standing under their own flag, and that Jyslin had put them there on purpose as a lesson, a lesson to _never be surprised_. And was he ever surprised to come around that corner and find himself looking right down the barrel of Meya's MPAC.

That just added to the score he was going to settle with the twins. Ever since the day he'd first met them, they'd always got the best of him, always been one step ahead of him, always managed to surprise him. Just as Kumi couldn't quite get the best of Jason, he'd been continually upstaged by Kumi's cunning twin guards. He really wanted to even that score, so he invited them to play along in the next exercise, one on each team, both to put them out where he could at least shoot at one of them, and also to give everyone a little experience in working with a Faey in a real combat situation. When they were out there, they'd be working with either Symone or Jyslin, so they had to get used to the idea of it. Meya and Myra were professional soldiers, career women, and he was sure they'd learn a few things from them during the exercise.

"Luke, I need you to come with me right now," Jason told him. "We're going to start ferrying supplies to the warehouse and get it ready, so people have blankets and food and stuff, and we have all our tools there. I want everyone else to gather up everything we used on the last refit and store it out by the landing pad," he ordered. "I'd like to have the first load on the skimmer and ready to go once it gets dark. We get the critical supplies over first, then we'll take people, then we take as much gear as we can before sunrise." He looked around. "Alright, any questions?"

There was silence.

"Alright, let's get going."

They broke up after that and got to work. Jason could tell that everyone was nervous about this, that the surprise he'd dropped on them about having to fool Faey using the concentration tricks that Symone had taught most of them had unsettled them, but that's what all of this was going to be about. These people had to be able to take surprises like that and deal with them. Being a guerilla was all about adapting to the environment as it was presented, not trying to control the situation.

But, Jason had a good feeling about it. He was confident that they could do it, or he wouldn't have arranged the test.

By sunset, a large pile of supplies, tools, equipment, and personal effects were stacked in neat piles by the skimmer, and the first load, food, blankets, and some sleeping bags and mattresses, were already loaded onto the skimmer, taking up the entirety of the skimmer's small cargo bay and half of the passenger cabin. Jason and Luke had to squeeze around boxes and totes to get to the control seats, and Jason sat down, rather pointedly, in the co-pilot's seat. "Alright Luke, start the checklist," Jason told him.

"Yes sir," he answered, taking the pilot's chair.

_Hold on! Don't close the hatch!_ Meya sent. Jason looked up and saw her running towards the skimmer, with Myra and Rann behind her. Jason gave them a strange look, and was about to send in reply to ask why, but he heard Meya literally vault up the steps and into the cabin. _Thanks, I didn't know if we were going to make it,_ she told him as Myra piled in behind her, then they helped Rann up and into the cabin.

_A bit cramped,_ Rann noted.

_You can sit on my lap, Doc,_ Meya sent with a naughty tilt to her thoughts.

"What are you doing?" Jason asked.

"We're going with you, of course," Myra said with a grin over a stack of boxes. "Push off, Meya, there are some seats up front that aren't filled."

"Oh, no," Jason said sternly. "You two have no business going to Lincoln. You put your noses in entirely too many things here as it is."

_Oh, give us a break,_ Myra sent with a mental scoff. _We're bored, you need our help, and you know we'll never say anything. Truth be told, me and Meya have been kicking around the idea of staying behind._

_What? Kumi _needs_ you,_ Jason sent hotly. _And this isn't your fight._

_It became our fight when they tried to kill us,_ Meya sent seriously. _Don't forget, honey, the same people you're fighting tried to kill _us_. Don't you think that makes this our fight? We're on the same side, and as long as we're here with you, we'll do what we can to help._

_You can try to make us leave, babe, but I don't think you have it in you,_ Myra sent with a wicked little smirk. _We're 