o with Tim," he recalled.

"Uh oh, sounds like you got some competition, sugah," she laughed.

"None at all, Mika. That's what I didn't really understand before, but I understand it now, at least I understand it now that I've been on this side of it instead of the other side."

"Ah remember you talking about it with me befo', after Ah found out Symone was screwin' you. You didn't seem all that enthusiastic about it then."

"I wasn't, because I thought that it just wasn't right for me to be fooling around with my best friend's wife, but that was when I was trying to look at things from a _human_ perspective, you know. Well, Symone and Jyslin aren't human, they're Faey, and I finally get what they've always tried to explain to me. I guess I had to experience it before I'd understand it. Anyway, as far as the Jyslin and Tim thing goes, it's just that she's her own woman, but she's also _my _woman. I know her, I love her, and I trust her. I know that any interest she has in Tim is purely physical, and if she wants to go play with Tim, she's more than welcome to, because it's _Tim_, and because I trust her. If it was someone else, well, that'd be a different story. But I know that all she's looking for from Tim is sex."

"You say it like that's all it is," she grunted.

"That _is_ all it is," he answered. "You'll find out when you finally find a man of your own, Mika, and you join minds with him during sex. That puts it all in an entirely new light."

"Ah don't think that's ever gonna happen," she told him. "It's been so long since Ah had good sex, Ah wouldn't know it from a hole in the ground."

"Pft, sure it will. Mike's been trying to work himself up to it, you know. Asking you out."

"Ah know. He's kinda cute, and he's got a hot bod, but Ah don't know if Ah'm ready yet. Even now, whenever someone touches me, Ah gotta resist the urge tah scream an' run away."

"Well, just remember that when you _are_ ready, there's someone out there that's patiently waiting for you," he told her.

"Just don't start tryin' to pimp yo'self out, Jayce. Yo' cute, but you ain't _that_ cute."

Jason gave her a surprised look, then laughed so hard he hurt something in his throat.

Temika wasn't the only one who noticed. Meya and Myra came up to him while he was working on the TEL module, when Jyslin was grabbing a snack, and sat on either side of the table. "And what can I do for you, ladies?" he asked.

_Spill,_ Myra sent.

_Spill what?_

_We want details,_ Meya sent eagerly. _All of them. The dirtier the better._

_Details about what?_

_We heard you and Tim swapped, so spill,_ Myra sent, leaning over and looking down into his eyes. _Every pant, moan, thrust, and grope._

_And what makes you think we're going to talk about that?_ Jason asked.

_Because we're friends, aren't we?_ Myra sent innocently. _And we certainly wouldn't get without giving. We can tell you all about our last encounter, but ours are more fun._

_We share men sometimes, _Meya sent with a smile, as if she was trying to surprise Jason with that information. _Men love it when they get twins. We have lots of good stories._

Jason had to laugh. _I imagine you do,_ he sent pleasantly. _And exactly who did you hear this from, by the way?_

_Songa,_ Meya answered. _She was in the storeroom beside the one that Tim and Jyslin were using, so she heard it all._

Jason tracked down Songa after disengaging himself from the twins, and all she could do was grin at him. _It's not like it's a big thing, Jayce,_ she told him as she sorted sheets she'd just retrieved from the laundry service that handled the linen for the warehouse. _I kinda expected that you shared with Tim and Symone, you're all best friends, after all. That kind of situation is quite common among my people. Me and Rann share a very similar arrangement with the couple that live beside us, back on Dracora. Me and Oda have been friends for years, I think Oda's husband is quite sexy, and Rann thinks that Oda has gorgeous legs. We've shared with each other a few times, and Oda was kind enough to keep Rann happy last year when I was on trip to Arctus for a seminar. I take it you'd rather keep it quiet?_

_Please, most of the humans wouldn't understand it._

_Not a problem, Jayce. I just hope that soon, you and me are friends enough that I can make the same invitation to you. I can't find a man here that piques my interest, I've been feeling my separation from Rann more and more with each day, and it'd be nice to have a friend that would take care of things like that for me._

_Well, I hope we can be close friends too,_ Jason sent delicately, remembering his first experience with that kind of statement, long ago from Symone. He certainly wouldn't encourage it, but he also didn't want to offend her... and he _did _like Songa. She was very nice, witty, funny, and had a broad intellect that made her a delightful woman to talk to.

_Well, then we need to get to know each other better, don't we?_ She sent with a dazzling smile. _Why don't you and Jyslin have dinner with me tonight? I'm a good cook._

_I'll ask Jyslin if she'd like to come,_ he answered honestly.

After that little loose end was tied up, Jason settled back into an exhaustive routine, a routine that barely changed after the events of the previous days. Jason and Jyslin needed to finish the TEL module as quickly as they could, because the hardware was installed and the module was the only thing left. But despite his busy schedule, he and Jyslin _did_ go have dinner with Songa, and went back to dinner with her every night that week. Songa really was a very good cook, and she was starved for some sincere conversation and just a feeling of inclusion. Her separation from Rann had hit her harder than she expected, and Jyslin had seen that, and was trying to make her feel better. Jason hadn't noticed how lonely Songa had been since coming here, and he was glad that the evenings she now shared with Jason and Jyslin made her feel better.

The dinners with Songa were actually a boon, because they helped both Jason and Jyslin rest and relax, and return in the morning focused on the task at hand. Jason had wanted to finish the TEL module by Friday, but snags in the coding dealing with the complicated rear cargo doors pushed it back to Sunday, when they finally got a module that passed every scenario without any errors. It was about time, too, since the refit team was still here, lounging around, and getting a little bored and restless. Jason wanted them to be here in case there was a problem and they had to take the system apart to fix it. Sunday morning, they finished the module, and they immediately ran it over to the dropship and called everyone in for a test. Before everyone was even there, Jason slotted the stick holding the module and had the dropship command computer download the module and install it. Once that was done, he had it integrate the module, which caused it to appear on the display as a primary module, one that affected direct ship operations. "Alright, this is a hot test," Jason called over the external speaker as the computer reported the module as ready, and Jyslin, in the copilot's seat, started a debug session so they could locate any coding conflicts that might cause errors. "Everyone stand clear of the hull!"

_Alright, we're in debug mode on this console and it's ready._

"Alright then, here we go. Bringing up the CMS." Jason activated it, which caused a holograph of the dropship to appear in the air over them. The multitude of tiny red dots all began to turn green in random order, as the computer polled each emitter, then the system came online and activated as Jason tapped an icon in that hovering display, a refinement they added to make activation faster. The module was designed to tap power from the main engines if they were online, and one of the two standby PPGs if the engines were offline. The engines were off, so the system drew power from the secondary PPG. There was a faint whine as the power surged through the ship. Sections of the ship went from gray to red, and then from red to green as the CMS system charged the emitters, and then they fired. The ship quickly turned completely green on the display except for the open hatches, the rear cargo doors, and the landing skids.

_We're not showing any errors,_ Jyslin reported.

"Are we working out there?"

_The system's working except for the windshield,_ Meya responded as several people shouted the same thing.

"Windshield? Hold on," Jason grunted, quickly issuing some commands. The CMS system was saying that the windscreen was working, but if they could see it from outside, then something was wrong. _Jyslin_

_Already on it,_ she broke in. _Give me a second. Go ahead and test the hatches and doors while I track this down._

_Alright._ "Alright guys I'm gonna close the port forward hatch, watch it for me. Closing it now." Jason closed the hatch, and watched as the door on the hologram flashed red, then the emitters flashed green, became steady green, and then the hatch door turned green. "Is it working?"

"Working fine!" someone shouted.

"Alright, closing the starboard aft hatch. Someone back there?"

_I'm back here,_ Songa sent.

"Okay, closing it now." He closed the hatch, and then watched as the module recognized the closed door and activated the emitters in it, which caused the door to flash red, the emitter dots on the display to flash green, turn green, and then the door turned green. "Alright, is it working?"

_Working perfectly,_ she answered.

"Alright guys, now the ugly part, the part we had so much trouble with, the rear cargo doors. Anyone back there?"

"I am!" Mike Colbert shouted.

_I found the bug with the windshield,_ Jyslin told him. _I can hot fix this in about two minutes, love._

_Alright, go for it._ "Closing the rear cargo doors," he called over the speaker. Jason watched intently as the three doors closed and locked, and when they locked, the CMS took over. It did exactly what they wanted it to do, recognizing each door separately, but not activating the system on any door unless all three were closed, because they all had to be closed in order for the CMS not to short out and blow emitters. But the program recognized the doors the way they intended, and when it saw all three doors closed _and locked_, which was vital, it activated the system in them. The doors flashed, primed, and then turned green. "Alright, how does it look?" Jason called.

"It worked just fine!" Mike shouted, though his voice was much distant now that Jason was hearing it through the external microphone and not through the open doors behind them.

_Okay, got the code fixed for the windscreen, updating it,_ Jyslin told him with deft movements of her hands over her holographic keyboard. The module auto-updated and reset _only_ in regards to the windscreen, a hot patch, and then the windshield on the hologram turned black, then turned red, then the emitter dots around the edge of it flashed green. Jason and Jyslin looked at the windscreen to see a visible charge flinch across it just as the windshield turned green on the hologram. "The windshield's working now!" someone called from outside.

"Yeah, Jys fixed it. Everyone go around and make sure every window is black," he said. "Let's make sure the bug didn't affect _all_ the windows."

Unlike Jason's skimmer, the dropship had windows on the four hatches, the forward and aft hatches on both the starboard and port sides, which required them to replace the windows with transparent Vanadrium, just like the windshield, and isolate them from the rest of the ship. Jason waited as the workers walked around the ship, making sure to stay clear of it, and reported back that all four of the other windows were working properly. "Alright guys, it looks like it's working. We'll test the landing gear doors, and then we'll do the pre-emption tests and test open door protocols, and if those pass, we're done."

Testing the landing gear would be after the pre-emption tests. The pre-emption tests took about five minutes, as they tested the module to ensure that it had the control over other systems that it needed to protect the integrity of the cloak. The dropship was armed and had shields, but those systems would not come online so long as the CMS was in operation, which was how it was supposed to work. They tested it to ensure that the CMS blocked shields, weapons, and disabled ship telemetry (which would be operating when they were flying the ship legally, so they had to make sure it didn't give them away), which it did. They then picked the ship up off the floor and retracted the landing gear, which caused the CMS to recognize the closing of the gear doors, and then activate the system in them. After getting confirmation that the gear doors were covered, they then tested open door protocols by extending the landing gear. The instant the doors started to open, the CMS disengaged on them, which caused the doors to turn red. Once they put her back on the deck, they opened every hatch and the rear doors one by one, ensuring that the system turned off for the doors once they were opened, and the system worked perfectly. Once they tested it on the rear cargo doors, Jason and Jyslin gave each other a grin, and Jason deactivated the cloak. When the black faded from the hull, everyone outside knew it was done, and gave a cheer even before Jason's voice came over the speaker. "Congratulations guys, it works perfectly. Great job!"

"This calls for another party!" someone shouted.

"Yeah, let's get Songa drunk again!" someone else called, which caused everyone to break out into laughter, including Songa.

"Okay then, tonight we celebrate, but tomorrow we start packing," Jason called over the speaker. "Tomorrow, we start moving to Cheyenne Mountain to help the others, and now that we have the dropship ready, we can finish up evacuating Charleston."

_How are we going to handle the warehouse?_

_There's always going to be someone here,_ Jason said. _I'm thinking we set up a three man staff that rotates every week, so people can do something that's not quite so strenuous. A kind of working vacation._

_Not a bad idea,_ she agreed. _But you'd better give the people in Cheyenne a party, or they're gonna be jealous. They've been working hard while the refit people have been standing around._

_Oh, I intend to, believe me. But before we can have a party, we have to complete the move to Cheyenne. I need to talk to Tom, see where we stand. I know there's more than enough room to move everything in, I just want to make sure us moving in won't cause any problems. He's the man to ask._

_Well, we can't do that until night. So until then, I think you need to relax a while. You've been working very hard, and you could use an afternoon off._

_Yes ma'am._


Chapter 15

_Chiira, Kaitha (New Year's Day), 4395 Orthodox Calendar_
_Tuesday, 13 July 2008, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Cheyenne Mountain (Native designation), Gorei Nature Preserve, American Sector_

New Year's Day on the Faey calendar.

The first day of the year.

The first day of the worst period in the history of House Trillane... at least if Jason had anything to say about it, because they were finally ready.

For nearly three months, they'd been preparing for this. This day. They'd worked feverishly to clean out, alter, and repair Cheyenne Mountain to suit their needs, and the official end of that work was today. But that was done now. Much to his surprise, the interior of the facility was enclosed in several large galleries burrowed out of the rock itself, a series of interconnected smaller galleries linking three larger ones, and buildings were erected within these galleries, erected on large springed platforms so they would not fall down if subjected to the shockwave of a nuclear explosion. Some galleries were connected to the main mazework by tunnels, and these splinter galleries contained some of the operational systems within the mountain, such as water reservoirs, power generation, and air filtering. Those buildings were retained, but most of what was in them was thrown out, stored in an unused gallery, raw material they could feed a replicator for making other things. Two galleries had originally been for operations, one for storage, one for living quarters for those who were permanently stationed within the base, and there was also a large hangar-like cavern with a passage leading outside as well, and currently the dropship was parked inside it.

The innermost gallery was divided up into two smaller areas. The innermost area, the one deepest within the mountain, was now the operations center. It held not just panels, but consoles, holographic screens, and an array of communications systems that they used to monitor gravband transmissions, television, old CB radio, FM radio frequencies, and images from all over the world via Trillane's own camera network, which Kiaari had infiltrated and hacked. Thanks to Kiaari, they could listen in to 90% of Trillane's military communications, with only the most top-secret protocols left unbroken thus far, could access Trillane's own camera system, and had real-time data on the position of every airborne vehicle on Earth thanks to Kiaari's breaking of the Terran Traffic Control system, which was displayed on a three dimensional holograph, including the locations of all military battle cruisers in orbit, and the orbital station. There were six people in that room at all times, watching, listening, and observing. That was Tim's domain. Tim had a knack for being able to organize the large amount of raw data, correlate it, weed out the redundant information, and present it in a meaningful manner. Since the first time he had commanded the community intelligence, riding shotgun with a panel during the road gang fight in Chesapeake, Tim had been learning how to take in information, process it, then present it. Kiaari had taken note of it and had taken him under her wing and taught him the basics of intelligence analysis, and it turned out he was a natural at it. As a result, he was now the commander of the surveillance and intelligence efforts. While Kiaari theoretically was now answering to Tim, she still worked specifically for Jason.

A small secondary gallery, connected by a tunnel off the operations center, was originally an office complex for the base command staff. Now, it served as the domain of the telepaths. They all lived together, not because they felt the need to be separate from everyone else, but because of the Faey and their desire to be close to each other, the need to establish an area that they felt was more _theirs_. Jyslin lived there with Jason, and Symone wanted to be near her friend, so Symone and Tim lived next door. Kumi decided she wanted to be there, near Jason, and that put Meya, Myra, and Fure there as well. Songa, Rann, and Yohne ended up there as well, when Songa and Rann couldn't find a room large enough to suit them, and Yohne came when she admitted that she felt uncomfortable being by herself, and felt the need to be around other Faey. The only telepath that didn't live in the gallery was Temika, for she still felt not entirely comfortable around the Faey. Some of the offices had been converted into a shop and a lab where Jason could work on his inventions, as well as where the main council room was located where they met to discuss important issues, but most of the other areas had been converted to Faey styles. Homemade tapestries and paintings were on the walls now, as well as several throw rugs over the floors. Faey liked vibrant colors in their living quarters, be it paint or rugs or furniture. They also wanted art, in the form of paintings or sculptures, an aesthetically pleasing surrounding that seemed to resonate with them and made them more at ease. It was the doctors that had converted the gallery into a Faey domain, working in their off time to beautify any area Jason literally didn't keep locked. Rann had even managed to figure out a way to build a fountain in the entry chamber leading into the gallery that held the buildings, using an annealer and other building tools to shape the fountain out of the native rock, and had put an abstract geometric formation in the middle from which the water poured in four channels down the structure and into the water pool at the base.

Jason didn't exactly like what they did to the area and the idea that the telepaths had more or less sectioned themselves off from the rest of the mountain and the rest of the resistance, but he couldn't talk the Faey out of the idea of living together, and he wasn't going to force the issue.

The largest internal gallery served as a manufacturing center. It was here where a complement of twenty people worked to build whatever they needed, be it equipment or weapons. There were quite a few buildings in this gallery, and each one had been converted to be used to build and store certain things. One building was the armory, and also where railguns would be assembled. One building would be where their first nasty surprise for Trillane was being manufactured, in large numbers.

The other main gallery served primarily as a training facility. Here, the buildings on the north side of the gallery had been knocked down to create a large exercise yard, and the south side buildings were now props used to train them all in the arts of combat. This was the domain of Jyslin, Meya, and Myra. The three Faey soldiers were the ones whipping a bunch of squatters into a viable guerilla force, capable of fighting the Faey in different tactical environments, as well as where they learned the art of stealthy infiltration.

There was a smaller gallery off this one that had been used as housing in the old base, where people would sleep if they closed the blast doors and sealed everyone inside, and this was now the living quarters for everyone but the Faey.

There were quite a few smaller rooms, tunnels, and crawlspaces, and those were the domain of Tom Jackson. He was the operations manager of the mountain, both overseeing its reconstruction and responsible for maintaining the equipment that allowed it to run. It was his responsibility to make sure the power and water worked, and also his job to ensure that the equipment they had installed to hide the mountain's occupants and signs of their inhabitation from the Faey above. From the air vents that had units that cooled the cycled air blown out of the mountain to exactly match the temperature of the external ambient air to the water filters and pumps that drew from the internal water reservoirs and supplied running water to the mountain, it was all Tom's domain. He took his job seriously, and he was very good at it. Under his watchful eye, the mountain's infrastructure hummed along in perfect working order. While Jason commanded the people within the mountain, Tom commanded the mountain itself.

Then there was the hangar. It was clear just by looking at the place that it was built long after the rest of the mountain's galleries, dug out well after the rest of the place was built. It was a small hanger, looking to have been designed to hold five helicopters, which would be towed out of a set of large doors that connected to the main tunnel by a secondary passage that had another set of doors. With the rotors of a helicopter folded, Jason saw that one could just barely get one down the main tunnel. The tunnel was just _barely_ large enough for his skimmer to fit in, but it could not maneuver, and it couldn't come all the way in, for the tunnel narrowed slightly about twenty feet from the entrance, just enough to keep the wings of the skimmer from letting it go any further. But there was a smaller tunnel leading from that hangar directly to the outside, which looked to be just large enough for a truck to go down, clearly an external tunnel meant for maintenance vehicles or fuel trucks, trucks holding volatile, explosive jet fuel that they _would not_ bring down the main tunnel, for obvious reasons of security.

That small tunnel was how they were getting the dropship and skimmer in. Though the tunnel was way, _way_ too small for the dropship to use, they were also dealing with a species who had mastered the technology of manipulating space itself. Jason had found the specs for a bubble conveyor on CivNet, in a place where the military application should not have been, and he snapped it up. It was a system that created a bubble of stretched space into which the dropship was placed, then it was ferried down the small cargo tunnel and opened into the hangar using an array of gravimetric generators that moved the bubble along like a conveyor belt without disrupting it. It had been surprisingly easy to build, and hadn't cost much at all.

It had, however, required a little creative manipulation of the outside. The first rule of the mountain was that nobody went outside. _Ever_. They would not so much as leave a footprint out there to tip anyone off that there were people in the mountain. But they'd had to go out to install some equipment, and that had required a light touch and fast workers. The inverse phase emitter system was installed around the mountain, a three layered redundant system that covered the entire mountain to hide it from Faey active sensors, where the sheer volume of rock surrounding them protected them from passive sensors... up to a point. The bubble conveyor drew a great deal of power, and was on the edge of the mountain, so they'd been forced to install some additional masking around that side of the mountain to conceal the bubble conveyor when it was in use. They'd also been forced to clear some of the area around the tunnel mouth, which they'd had to do in stages so as not to present a sudden dramatic change in the topography. Over the course of a month, the area around the tunnel was slowly altered so the conveyor could be used, and also hidden from sensors.

Not everyone was in the mountain, though. At any time, there were three people in Lincoln, and Kumi was usually a fourth. Kumi wanted to return to Draconis and track down who tried to kill her, but Miaari would not allow her to return. It was just too dangerous, she told them. They knew she was still alive, and they were tearing Draconis and Arctus apart looking for her. If she returned to the Imperium, it wouldn't take them long to find her, and then the assassins would converge on her like a swarm of bees around their queen. So Kumi was forced to remain in exile, where she got into everyone's business, aggravated the hell out of everyone, but also decided to alleviate her boredom by taking over the financial operations of Vultech and the other enterprises that were funding the rebellion. Kumi knew how business worked, and knew how the Imperial Bureau of Taxation worked. It was her pulling the strings that got materials bought and shipped, redirected materials and funds for use by the rebellion while hiding it in Vultech's records, as well as creative uses of the Faey banking system that hid what was really going on behind a complicated web of deceptive accounting and records. Kumi's efforts was what caused a sudden river of material and equipment to flow into Cheyenne Mountain, bought by company capital, and those expenditures and material redirections were masterfully concealed within a stunningly complex web of shell companies, fake personas, and fictitious shipping invoices that made it look like everything Vultech did was legitimate. Thanks to her, Jason could buy large amounts of raw materials, and then pull it for rebel use while Kumi did her magic to make that material disappear, but still exist on paper that would leave a trail that would make the auditors look somewhere else when they started trying to find who was funding the rebellion. He just told her what they needed, and she found it, bought it, had it shipped, redirected what materials they were going to use, and then sold off the excess at a profit and hid the loss of capital used to fund rebellion activities in a web of fake investments in both real and fake companies.

Kumi had the soul of a pirate, but she had the mind of a white collar criminal.

Much of what Kumi did wasn't just illegal. There was a new dropship sitting on the tarmac outside the Vultech building. It was a used dropship, not refitted for stealth, but gave them a second method of moving cargo without tying up the stealth dropship. Vultech-2 was the dropship that flew to Draconis and other planets of the Imperium to pick up shipments and bring them back to the warehouse more than half the time. It was a Thrynne dropship, one of their largest models, nearly double the size of the stealth dropship, with powerful engines and a huge cargo capacity. It wouldn't fit in the hangar, it had to be loaded and unloaded outside. Kumi had bought that dropship, having used some of her connections to track down a good deal on a good dropship. Kumi was more than her criminal bent and her connections, however. She was a good businesswoman educated by House Trillane in House operations, which were primarily financial matters, and knew where to invest company capital to make monetary gains. In just one month, she had turned a C13,748 profit, which was a respectable figure given the short amount of time she'd been doing it. That money made it easier to hide Vultech's spending that couldn't be accounted for because that money bought rebellion equipment.

While Kumi was the brain behind Vultech's operations, Songa was its face. Rann and Songa were the only Faey among them without a price on their heads, since it was known that Yohne was Kumi's personal physician, and where she was, Kumi probably wasn't far away. It was Songa that handled the live interaction between company officials and the outside world, the smiling face concealing the true nature of the beast lurking behind her. Songa was the company President, a fancy title that basically gave her signing authority on most transactions, and allowed her to handle the handshakes and phone calls while Kumi did the real work behind the scenes, and Jason maintained official legal ownership on paper using his alias.

It was even nearly legitimate now. Kumi was talking about hiring real employees at the company that would know nothing about the rebellion to reinforce the illusion that it was a real company and not just a front. It would make it a little more dangerous, bu