t Kumi was confident that she could manage it. Jason wasn't so sure about that, but it was something that he was sure they'd fight about later on.

And all the while, as they did that, the rebels trained, built, and got ready. They knew the risks, but it didn't matter. They knew the plan, and they were ready for it. Even as they worked on rebuilding the mountain, they trained. Half of them had passed the written tests that Jason had demanded for flying, and now he, Luke, Meya, and Myra were training them in actual flight. Kumi had managed to procure a used flight simulator, and that was where they were getting their controls practice, mixed in with actual stick time behind the skimmer or dropship controls when flights were made to Lincoln and back. Jyslin, Tim, Symone, and Temika were on the fast track in the groups, for they were the telepaths and they were the ones that absolutely had to be able to fly... not because they were telepaths, but because they were Jason's friends and family, and he would make _damn_ sure they would be proficient. They were his _personal_ students. He trained others every day, but he was the only one that taught the other telepaths, because he wanted to make absolutely sure that the most important people in his life got trained up to _his_ satisfaction.

They trained in flying. They trained in combat operations, and had become proficient enough to where Jyslin said she wouldn't bat an eye over leading them in a combat mission. They trained in Faey technology; generally, Jason, Tim, and Luke trained the others in the assembly of basic units using plans and pre-fabricated components. Given a blueprint and a supply of parts, his rebels learned how to assemble them into finished products, like factory workers. They weren't experts in anything they trained in, but they knew enough to be able to function... and that was what mattered.

Because this was the day. This was the day they stopped preparing and started acting, at least in a limited manner. There would be no manned raids on Trillane targets, but the automated attacks would begin today. And the first blow against Trillane was already loaded up in the dropship, a shipment of little devices about the size of a volleyball that Tim had coined _deathballs_... and it was a fitting nickname. They were mines, but not quite like any other mine ever devised. These mines would lay on the ground, hidden from sensors by small inverse phase emitters that would activate when they detected a Stick flying within their activation range. When it activated, a gravimetric engine in the mine would make it fly up, lock in on the Stick, and then strike it. When it hit, it would attach itself to the hull and discharge an ionic pulse, kind of like an old EMP pulse. It was a non-explosive version of an ion cannon's magnetic storm effect, generating an ion storm that would disrupt plasma flow, blow plasma relays, scramble moleculartronic circuitry, and cause gravimetric engines to overload and shut down. After the pulse fired, the mine would destroy itself by overloading its PPG and blowing itself up, so Trillane couldn't take it apart and learn how it worked. It wouldn't be a fusion explosion like the one that destroyed Chesapeake, but it would be a big enough bang to obliterate the mine and punch a hole in the hull of the Stick where it was attached. That self destruct mechanism would be active at all times, and would go off if the mine was disturbed while laying on the ground waiting for a target.

It was more humane than it needed to be. Jyslin had rode him about that... she wanted him to build mines that destroyed the Stick completely, but he just couldn't bring himself to build mines that would give the crews of those Sticks absolutely no chance to survive. At least his way, blowing out the power systems and burning out the engines, the crew could survive the crash when the Stick came down. He knew people would die, that was a given, but he just didn't want to make it a _certainty_, just a _possibility_. In his mind, the crews of those Sticks weren't soldiers, weren't going to be actively involved in opposing him. They were truck drivers in his eyes, just civilians doing a job, and he wasn't going to be merciless to them. Sticks had crash foam and crash mitigation systems, and that was enough for him to be alright with his approach. So long as the crews weren't really unlucky, they would probably survive when the Stick crashed.

There were 27 mines finished, the result of three weeks of assembly line work by the rebels that weren't actively training in other areas. Assuming that 75% of them worked, that was around 21 Sticks that would be taken out. That was barely a scratch to Trillane, but if they lost 25 Sticks a month for a year, the cost of replacing them was going to get _very_ high. And that didn't count the lost cargo, the price of trying to counter his mines in terms of equipment and personnel, and the cost of beefing up their military presence. And the beauty of his plan was that the mines had multiple ways they could lock on to Sticks and attack them. Every time they figured out how the mines were targeting Sticks and ignoring other types of ships and countered it, he could simply change their identification protocol. The mines were currently set on the easiest way, by using the Stick telemetry itself. Every _legal_ airborne ship broadcasted a telemetry signal that identified it to traffic control, and the mines would use that signal to detect and lock in on Sticks, and _only_ on Sticks. When Trillane countered, he would have them identify Sticks by their unique engine gravimetric distortion signature, something that _only_ Stick engines produced. When Trillane figured that out and installed maskers, the mines would use visual detection and comparison, and would attack any airborne vehicle that _looked_ like a Stick. If Trillane got around that, then the mines would sweep the area above them with passive sensors and attack any vehicle above them that had the right inductive resonance, which was a function of the mass and metallurgical makeup of the ship within a certain tolerance. Unless the Stick was carrying metals as cargo, its inductive signature would be the same no matter what, and the mines could use that against them. He could come after the Sticks with his mines in so many ways, the only way Trillane could protect them from everything would be to have fighters escort them and shoot down his mines as they attacked. And that tied up Trillane's resources and disrupted the current free-moving transportation network. If the Sticks could only move in convoys with fighter protection, it would bottleneck Trillane's entire cargo transportation network, and that was exactly what Jason wanted.

And that was just the first weapon. He didn't want to put every idea he had out on the field at once. He would throw them at Trillane one at a time, make them counter his current idea until he could no longer attack them using that device, then he'd just put a _new_ device on the field and attack them in an entirely new manner. When they started countering that one, the _old_ weapon would reappear again at the same time using a new method of attack. And when they defeated both, a third weapon would appear, and so on and so on. It would be an endless game of one-upsmanship between the rebels and Trillane, as the rebels sought to find ways around Trillane's defenses, and Trillane worked to figure out how they were being attacked and counter it.

That wasn't the only thing they were doing, though. Rann had finished his DNA scanner, and had built a small device that had sensors that sent data back to the main unit via threaded shortrange gravband. What was more, each unit had more than one sensor that would report back to it, allowing them to plant one device and then scatter sensors all over, up to a range of about half a mile. Each unit could support 15 remote sensors and 15 button cameras, and they'd already built 14 of them and set them up, scattering sensors and cameras through mass transit systems where a multitude of people would touch them and get scanned. Two were set in New York City, two in Los Angeles, and one each in Chicago, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Miami, London, Sao Paolo, Madrid, Tokyo, Cape Town, and Beijing. Each unit was set to transmit an image of anyone that matched the telepathic profile to a specific protected site on CivNet, which they could access. The site had nothing about what it was about, it was just a place where pictures of people would appear.

And while all that was going on, the rebels would be watching, using Trillane's own surveillance system against them. They'd know where Trillane sent every ship, and know how to move their assets to keep them out of danger. And when Trillane eventually did find Kiaari's tampering and moved to fix it, denying the rebels access to that information, well, the resistance would then attack key surveillance outposts and equipment to blind Trillane and give them more room to maneuver. The orbital sensor arrays and the cameras were first on the list of targets, for those couldn't be captured or hidden from Faey sensors, since they were on the edge of the planetary gravity well. Gravimetric sensors could pick them up. But if the rebels couldn't use them, they'd deny them to Trillane as well. Jason already had plans for that, and those plans were sitting in his shop. Five orbital attack drones, literally nothing more than flying guns that would be released from a ship in space. They were military-grade plasma cannons on gravimetric pods, which could either be operated via remote control or programmed to fly itself around and attack pre-determined targets. Faey plasma weaponry had a long range in space, but the solar wind _did_ cause the magnetic bottles containing the plasma to erode, which limited the range of the weapons to about 500 _kathra_, or around 270 miles. Jason's toys would track down and attack the eyes and ears of Trillane, and since he would attack them with plasma weapons, the low-grade shields that the devices employed to protect them from space dust and micro-meteor strikes, shields that would have made using a railgun an uncertain one-shot one-kill scenario, they would have no defense against a plasma cannon.

And those toys would appear later on as anti-Stick devices, robotic drones that would roam the supply lanes and attack any Stick they encountered with their plasma cannons. They were cheap and easy to build, and the plasma cannon the device was using was an older model that wouldn't penetrate military armor... but most commercial Sticks _did not_ have military armor. Against a Stick, those older plasma cannons were still lethal.

When Kumi arranged a supply of the parts to build the cannon drones, they'd mass produce them. But for now, the only weapon they could produce quickly and in great quantity given the materials they had on hand were the mines. Now that the reconstruction was complete, people could devote more time on the line to build them, which would result in more mines being cranked out. The 27 mines they'd built were already deployed; Jason had scattered them all over central Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas early that morning, before sunrise. No mine was within 25 miles of any other mine, and they'd been dropped near farms but away from areas frequented by people so nobody would find one, monkey with it, and get himself killed when the mine's anti-tampering protocol kicked in and caused it to self destruct. All of them were inactive right now, awaiting an activation signal. After that, each mine would attack the first Stick that got within its activation range. Jason's hope was that they could complete at least one mine every day, which would be dropped and destroy a Stick, which would eat into Trillane's profit margin that much more. It was nothing but nickels and dimes to a house as rich as Trillane, but Jason intended to literally nickel and dime them to death.

But none of that mattered if Trillane kept everything a secret. They could hide their losses of Sticks, they could increase output on farms on other continents to cover the loss of North American production, at least for a while. Their intent was to push Trillane off Earth, but using force and guerilla tactics was only half the battle, and he knew it. He had to make it clear to the rest of the Imperium that the people of Earth were _very_ unhappy with their current administrators, and they wanted new people. And also make it clear that now the people of Earth could _fight back_, so they'd better be taken pretty damn seriously. It was also necessary to reinforce the idea that they weren't fighting the Imperium, only Trillane.

That was why he was here. He sat in a chair behind an ebony desk left behind, with the insignia of the resistance, the phoenix emblem emblazoned on his armor, embroidered on a red flag behind him, the phoenix done in glittering gold. In both English and Faey script under that insignia was the word _Legion_. That was the official name of the resistance. Not the Terran Resistance Front or some silly multiword title that spelled out some anagram... they were simply the Legion. Jason had decided on that for that very reason... so they couldn't be trivialized with initials. Anyone referring to them had to use their name, their full name, and the full impact that name entailed. In front of his desk was a single camera, and behind it stood Temika and Tim, who were running it. Standing behind them was Jyslin and Symone.

Jason was waiting for the red light to come on on the camera. Jason was going to record a message, an unofficial declaration of war, and then Miaari was going to make sure it got into the right in-box at INN. If INN didn't follow up on the story, though, then Trillane could cover up what was about to start happening on Earth, and that would make their job more difficult. Trillane needed to face pressure on both sides of the fence, both from the rebels doing damage to them and from the Imperium.

_Okay, ready Jayce?_ Tim sent, and Jason nodded. _Alright, in three... two... one..._

The red light came on.

"Good day," Jason began, speaking in Faey. He had no prepared speech for this, only talking points that he intended to get across without sounding like a politician. "I represent an organization called Legion. We are a group of Terrans who oppose the illegal actions of House Trillane and the crimes they have committed against Terra and the native Terran population. This recorded statement is an official announcement of our existence, and of our intentions. I am Jason Fox, and I stand as leader and commander of this organization.

"I'm sure some people recognize me, given CNN and INN plastered my picture all over their newscasts for three straight days. I'm the man that CNN and Trillane blamed for the Orala Explosion. Well, that's what Trillane let slip out, but they certainly didn't let the whole story slip. In short, the Orala explosion was caused by House Trillane, and it was a botched attempt to assassinate _me_. Why would they go to such extremes over a single Terran male, you might ask? Well, the answer is simple. I have personally witnessed House Trillane engaging in slavery, abducting native Terrans and selling them into slavery outside the Imperium, a crime that, as some of you might know, could lead to the revocation of Trillane's noble charter if proved true. That is something that Trillane would _definitely _go to such an extreme to prevent.

"I cannot offer hard, documented proof, because shortly after the incident where I came about this information, they dismantled their slaving ring and buried it in the deepest hole they could find. However, I can state with full sincerity that I have seen it. This is only the largest grievance the humans of Terra have against House Trillane, though. We have been subject to, witness to, and on the receiving end of multiple instances where House Trillane has denied our rights as Imperial citizens, illegally seized our rightful property as defined by Imperial law, and have abused and mistreated us. And we're sick and tired of it. Since Trillane has decided to treat us like cattle, treat us like _slaves_ instead of Imperial citizens, we cannot in good conscious just stand by and do nothing and allow it to start again when the dust settles and Trillane thinks that nobody is watching them.

"We don't believe that the Imperium knows the extent to which House Trillane has been abusing the native population of Terra, and we _demand_ to be recognized as Imperial citizens, to be afforded the same rights as the other six races of the Imperium. We are _not_ slaves, and we are _not_ property. Our homes are _not_ the personal playgrounds of Trillane soldiers to ransack to their heart's desire, and our lives are _not_ commodities to be bought and sold on the slave markets!

"So, consider this a declaration of war against House Trillane. The forces of Legion demand that House Trillane leave Terra, and we beseech Empress Dahnai to revoke Trillane's contract to run the farming operations of Terra and award it to another noble house, a house that will treat us like Imperial citizens and not like chattel. We don't wish to break away from the Imperium, we only want Trillane off our planet. The Legion will not rest until Trillane has been evicted from Terra and a more just and fair house is brought in to replace them.

"Understand one thing. Our fight is with Trillane, _not_ with the Imperium, and _not_ against Empress Dahnai. We want nothing more than the same rights afforded to other Imperial citizens, no more, no less. And since it seems that the Imperial forces on Terra either don't know what's going on or are turning a blind eye to it, it has forced us to resort to this, the last option, which is armed insurrection against our oppressors. Let me make it clear once again, our fight is with Trillane, not with the Imperium. When the last Trillane ship leaves orbit, we will gladly lay down our arms. But so long as a single Trillane stands on Terran ground, we will fight.

"Because Terra can now be considered an active warzone, I ask that all Imperial civilians please refrain from travel to Terra until further notice. We wish no innocents to be caught in the crossfire of what will purely be a _local_ affair. Please, if you wish to come to Terra, please do so _after_ Trillane is gone and a new noble house is in charge.

"You can take this message seriously, or you can laugh at it. I'm sure some comic is going to find it on CivNet and put it on her show tonight to make fun of it. But know this. You may find it funny, but House Trillane won't be laughing. _They_ know what is going on. _They_ know what they've done. _They_ know I'm not trying to be funny. _They_ will take this very seriously. They know exactly who I am, what I am, and what I can do. They won't be laughing."

Jason reached under the desk, then produced small golden ring, a ring with the relief of the phoenix symbol of the Legion engraved upon its flat top. "I read that in the old times, when a noble declared war on a rival, she would send the rival house's leader her own insignia ring, a warning that she was coming to get it back. Ancient rites and customs dictated that the ruler of the house that received the ring would send her own ring in return, and carry the opposing house's ring with her at all times. The winner of that war would take back her ring from her rival, and take the ring of her rival as a trophy... at least until that house managed to either take the ring back by force or pay a ransom to have it returned. Well, I'm not a noble, but consider this the official insignia ring of the Legion. And I'm sending this to _you_, Grand Duchess Trillane. Keep it with you. Feel its warmth and its weight in your pocket at all times. Never forget it, because _we will be coming for it_." He set the ring on the desk, making a sweet _ching_ as the pure gold resonated from the impact with the ebony.

"It's your move, Grand Duchess," Jason called. _Okay, cut it,_ he sent.

The red light went out, and all four of them laughed and clapped.

_How was it? Think I did alright?_ he asked.

_It was fucking brilliant! Symone sent grandly, rushing forward. That thing with the ring will drive the Grand Duchess apeshit! Are you really gonna send it to her?_

_You bet your ass I am, Jason sent vehemently. There's just one thing I have to do first. Jason reached into the drawer of the desk, and pulled out a small black rectangular object, upon which was affixed a single red button, the light inside it blinking on and off. Jyslin would recognize that remote, for it was the same one he'd used to activate all his traps when her squad was trying to force him to go out with her. "And so, it begins," he declared in a stately voice, feeling a strange need to speak those words aloud rather than send, staring directly at them. "The mines are hot. There's no turning back now. We are now at war with Trillane."_

_Good, Jyslin sent with an audible snort. It's about damn time._

_Oh, Jayce, just so you know, I was piping that through the CCTV, so everyone saw us record it, Tim told him with a sly smile. Now everyone knows we're really doing it. We're not just pretending anymore, we're now real rebels._

_I think you covered everything, Jyslin told him. You made sure to stress that it's Trillane and not the Imperium, you explained why we're doing it, and you challenged Empress Dahnai to put a hand in before the real bloodshed starts. That was everything. And you delivered it perfectly, she added. I knew not giving you a script would work better. You're much better at just going with what's in your heart, not what's on a teleprompter._

_Thanks, love, he sent with sincere modesty._

_Jayce, I'm sending it to INN now and I'm gonna post it in a few choice places where I know it'll get some attention,_ Kumi's voice came over the intercom for the small studio, for that's what the small room was, a little studio for an announcer to make broadcasts over the mountain's internal closed circuit television system, which Tom, Tim, and Jason had repaired and restored to working order.

_Alright. I think I'm gonna go back to my room and try to calm down. For some reason, now I'm getting nervous._

_It's because now we stop planning and start doing, Jyslin sent, and they all nodded._

Jason did just that. He returned to the small apartment he and Jyslin shared, sat down in a recliner chair, and tuned everything out. It was on now. Those mines were hot, and one of them might have activated and attacked by now. Kumi had sent that video out onto CivNet as an open declaration of war, an open declaration that he was not dead, and now he couldn't be seen outside of the mountain. Luke would have to be the one to take Max Sterling's identity now; he'd have to change the licenses. He was certainly good enough to fly the dropships, though he'd never be alone. Their standard procedure required a telepath to be on every flight. That was usually Jason, but he had the feeling that Rann and Yohne were going to see some of that action. Jason's face would now be programmed into just about every face recognition program all over the Imperium, _not_ just on Earth, so he couldn't show his face much of anywhere.

He sat there a while, reflecting, hoping they were doing the right thing, and worrying about what was coming. This phase of the plan wasn't that dangerous, just nightly stealth flights out to drop mines. But soon their combat training would be put to the test, when they conducted their first raid. That raid wouldn't be for several weeks at least, after Trillane got it into their heads that the only way Jason meant to fight was using technology to fight them from a distance; mines, flying guns, traps, and so on. Once they settled down, were confident all they had to do was catch Jason to put a stop to the mines, got complacent about the physical security at their facilities, then the rebels would attack, and the gunfire would begin, and people would get killed.

They didn't know how many rebels there were. Jason they would see, Jason they would identify. He was sure they'd include Jyslin as one of those rebels, and maybe a handful of humans. Trillane wouldn't think that they could field up to 30 trained soldiers, armed and armored, protected from telepathic assault by the 6 telepaths that would be engaging in combat operations; Jason, Jyslin, Symone, Temika, Meya, and Myra. Thirty combatants attacking unprepared facilities could easily overwhelm the defenses and take the facility. He knew that they wouldn't get many free shots like that, that Trillane would tighten security after the second attack, so they had to make their first two free attacks count.

And there was the grim knowledge that he'd lose some of his own in those attacks. They all knew the risks; they all knew it _would_ happen. He had to face that, face the knowledge that he was going to be giving people orders that would lead to their deaths. But, he kept telling himself, they all knew the risks when they signed up for this. And to die in the pursuit of freedom was the most noble way to go.

                                        * * *

It was a big joke to the Imperium. Just as Jason predicted, comics found the video on CivNet and used it for material. He'd been vilified in the press after the explosion at Chesapeake, and those unflattering stories resurfaced after the video was noticed by INN, in conjunction with comics on TV making fun of "the little soldier," as one Merat Feralle called him.

But, as Jason predicted, Trillane was _not_ laughing.

They weren't laughing when the video reached Trillane's ears. They weren't laughing when they realized just who was on that video, because they knew he was a telepath. That was one little fact that wasn't common knowledge outside of Trillane and certain hallways in the Imperial government back on Dracora, that there were human telepaths. They weren't laughing because they knew that Jason had engineering training and could build technological devices. Their infiltration of Trillane's network got them a first-person view of the reaction, coming down from the head of Trillane's military herself: look for sabotage. If one man was leading a self-proclaimed rebellion against Trillane, he wouldn't put himself out in the open. A man with Jason's training would stay in hiding and build sabotage devices to inflict damage.

And they were right. That's exactly what Jason had planned... at least for now.

They _really_ weren't laughing when the first Stick came down.

One Stick crashing was an isolated incident. Two crashing on the same day was a coincidence. Three crashing in one day was a pattern. Four crashing in one day was an _attack_.

At first, they had no idea how they did it. Since the mines destroyed themselves after firing their ion pulse, it looked like some kind of conventional explosion had damaged the Sticks when they surveyed the wreckage, but the damage wasn't enough to bring a Stick down. But they certainly had enough wrecks to inspect. Jason had planted 27 mines the night before, and all 27 activated and attacked Sticks within the first two days. What was a relief to Jason was that only 5 fatalities had been reported in those 27 crashes, that his merciful means of bringing them down did spare some lives, but the Sticks were totally destroyed, and the ones that had been carrying cargo containers had a total loss of cargo.

Jason's intent was to have one mine finished every day, so every day, Trillane looked over the incident reports and saw at least one crashed Stick. That was the plan, and the crew didn't let him down. They worked their asses off to build the mines, and every day at sunset, when Jason prepared his skimmer to go out and drop them, there was always at _least_ one mine ready to go. Sometimes there was two, and occasionally there was three. Those mines usually only went a few hours before activating and attacking, because Jason put them in places where Sticks more or less had to go.

In the first week, Trillane still had no idea how it was being done. But finally, someone saw a mine activate, and they finally knew what they were up against. Now that they knew it was a ground-based device that somehow could not be detected by sensors, and it activated by some kind of proximity trigger. Armed with this information, they changed their tactics. They restricted Sticks to vertical columns directly over their destinations, coming down from 30,000 _shakra_ in a controlled descent directly over the destination. This turned out to not be a good idea, for Jason just increased the sensor range of the mines, they activated and attacked the Sticks, and made them crash directly on the facilities where they were landing or taking off. This created a tremendous amount of collateral damage, and lots of ugly pictures on INN of farm storage barns burning. So, much as Jason predicted, they realized that the mines only attacked Sticks, and worked out how they were targeting the ships. They grounded the entire Stick fleet for two days as they encrypted Stick telemetry, and while they were doing that, Jason simply changed the setting on the mines, and it gave them two days to plant more mines. He also added a new little feature to spread out the attacks after a hiaitus, to keep the damage steady and in the eyes of Trillane. Jyslin wrote a little subroutine for him in the software of the mines that would cause them to randomly activate, which would let some Sticks pass over them safely, then activate and attack in a random pattern. The routine was weighted, so that every time it didn't activate, it increased the chances of it activating in the next trigger, and if the random number generator got streaky, the weighted protocol would cause it to activate after the 20th Stick passed by no matter what. He also started covering them with camouflage netting; since Trillane knew what they looked like now, they could use the cameras to look for them on the ground. So Jason started concealing them.

After the Sticks returned to service, Trillane was smugly confident that they'd defeated the mines... for about fifteen minutes. The very first Stick that approached a farm in southern South Dakota, one of the first that had come down from a freighter in orbit, was one that quite a few Trillane officials were watching. So they got a first hand view of a su